Scarp: Light rail? I’m keeping quiet for now

I went from west Mesa to downtown Phoenix and back Tuesday, and at no time did the rubber ever meet the road.

Metro extends hours for Insight Bowl, party

East Valley commuters take to the rails

Read Mark Scarp's blog, 'Scarpsdale'

Unlike the joy riders who composed the overwhelming majority of Metro light-rail train passengers on Day Four of free travel, my trip actually was for business. I teach journalism part time at Arizona State University’s downtown campus (right on the rail line), and one of my classes’ textbooks was waiting for me to pick up.

So I drove a mile and a half from the Mesa office of the Tribune to the line’s eastern terminus at Sycamore and Main Street. There were trains waiting on both sides of the platform to go west, and both were filling fast.

I found a spot to stand amid a few swarming preschoolers and next to retirees who looked as though they wanted to be having a better time.

It was supposed to take 40 minutes from Mesa to downtown Phoenix, either way. Each took about an hour given the number of people trying to get on at each station and the relative few who disembarked at each (I saw no more than 10 out of dozens).

It was obvious that most of these folks were riding because (a) it was free and (b) it eventually took them, not somewhere, but right back to where they got on, as if it were Disneyland.

But Disneyland is four-star fun, lights, sounds, music. Light rail frowns on music. To listen to any, you must wear headphones, but one of the constant reminders coming over the public-address system tells you to keep even what’s coming over your headphones at low volume.

The other announcements are direct and no-nonsense. No saving seats. Don’t eat. Don’t smoke. No booze. Drink only out of an approved, no-spill container. No vandalism. (Really, did they ever expect a vandal to holler as they haul him off in handcuffs, “But it didn’t say not to smash the windows!”?) Put your right foot in. Take your right foot out. Put your right foot in and shake it all about.

Light rail has its aesthetic moments, don’t get me wrong, but its main job is to get you someplace along its route safely. Notice that this does not mean in a picturesque way — the only visually appealing part of the route was as the train loomed over Tempe Town Lake (“We’re now crossing the mighty Mississippi,” one rider jokingly intoned) — in fact at many points along the way it was clear that some of these folks from the East Valley spend very little time in the central city, or didn’t want to own up to it.

Suburbanites, meet the urban core.

“That gives me the willies every time I see it,” said one older lady to an older gentleman regarding the bars on the windows of some ramshackle apartments along the route.

“Yeah, these are pretty rough neighborhoods,” he said.

“How do they get out of there if there’s a fire?” she asked.

A packed light-rail train spawns impromptu etiquette. Mothers with small children were offered some of the few open seats. I gave up my share of a stair to a boy whose mother said he had cerebral palsy.

Strangers talked to each other. What a sight. Put people within several inches of each other for an hour or so, and it’s amazing what they discover they have in common. Weren’t these the same people safely hiding behind limousine-dark tinted glass and the air on full blast in July?

The camping out in seats had become so out of hand that the public-address system asked people to please get off the train somewhere in downtown Phoenix to let other people have a chance to board. Then they apologized for any inconvenience, which was nice. How was anyone to know that light rail, as vilified and upbraided as it has been for several years, had tens of thousands of people packing platforms to give it a try?

As for light rail’s future, whether it should go south into Chandler or north into Scottsdale, for example, or have hours extended into the middle of the night for imbibing bar-hoppers to be able to board, it’s still extremely early to start making definitive statements.

For one thing, while it seems obvious that riding light rail while intoxicated is preferable to driving in the same condition, remember that people have to get off the train sometime, 15, 20 or 30 minutes from now, and for too many that won’t be very long to have sobered up as they get into their cars for the rest of the trip home.

Give this 20-mile line a year for us to learn some solid lessons from it. Find out how long it took the folks in Los Angeles, for example, to learn what they now know from their light-rail lines.

This all may be academic anyway, as given the economy there’s no sign that the kind of federal money to build such transportation modes that was made available in the 1990s for projects such as the Metro is going to be forthcoming any time soon.

For now, while it may not inspire you to whistle “Chattanooga Choo Choo” as you board, light rail represents a new way to get around to some well-known Valley places. It’s spurring redevelopment of some rundown areas. It gives this metropolitan area a bit of a grown-up feel.

But just remember to keep those headphones quiet.

I’m not going to tell you again.

But they will. About six or seven times, at least.